Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will explain it to him in case he does not understand. The reason we oppose the shared equity scheme is very simple. We believe it risks increasing house prices for people who are already locked out of the market. The Minister need not take our word for it. The Departments of Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform, the ESRI and the Central Bank have all warned him about the scheme. He can do his amused thing all he wants but people are suffering as a result of the policies of his party and Fine Gael. He might think it is a game in here but it is no game for people who are paying sky-high rents and are locked out of the property market.

One would swear that butter would not melt in the mouth of the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, and all he wants to do is make sure people have a home. Since 2016, I have been telling and warning him that the experiment with REITs and IREFs in this country has failed. I told him that they are squeezing out first-time buyers and those who want to purchase their own home. I told him they are dominating the market, particularly in Dublin. In 2019, six out of every ten new homes that were sold in Dublin did not even come onto the market. The funds snatched them up and the Minister knows damn well why. They did so because he has created a tax-free environment that incentivises this type of investment and ownership. Those same funds then charge sky-high rents.

The Government is adamant its strategy is right but it is running around like a headless chicken. What happened in Maynooth was a lightning rod for the people of this State, who are very angry that rents are so high. They are angry that their sons and daughters are locked out of home ownership. They are angry that there is no chance of any ordinary person owning a property in Dublin or, indeed, the commuter belt. They are angry that the policies of the Government are fuelling this scenario and that it has encouraged and rolled out the red carpet for the vulture funds that are benefiting from and profiting off this situation. Mullen Park was the lightning rod but what happened there has been going on for ages in different estates. The Minister is trying to convince us that we need this type of investment to ensure developers can build estates. He is conflating two different issues. Private rental sales do not fund developments. These funds give no money to the developer to finance building. All they do is purchase the properties after they are built and pay for them at that stage. The developer gets the money from international finance, the banks and other sources. There is no issue with that. It is not the private rental sales that fund these developments. All they do is come in at an early stage and say they will buy the properties from the developer when they are finished, and they pay up when the properties are completed.

That has been happening right across the board, not just in the case of Mullen Park in Maynooth a couple of weeks ago. In 2019, there were 2,909 new homes sold in private rental sales, mainly to these funds, as well as 3,039 second-hand homes. Where was the Minister's outrage in regard to the XVI portfolio that saw 765 homes sold to IRES REIT in 2019? What about the Vert project that saw 385 homes in Leopardstown sold to funds in June the same year? Also in 2019, 370 homes were sold to the funds under Project Turner. In Heuston South Quarter, 266 homes were snatched up by the funds in the same year, locking out first-time buyers, and another 222 homes were sold under the Belgrave Collection. I could go on to name 42 other transactions totalling 5,700 homes bought up by the funds in 2019 alone.

The problem is not just that these funds are buying up properties. They are pushing up the price of a home by paying more than €80,000 above market price, thereby creating a new ceiling and locking out people. The Minister thinks this is okay because, somehow, €450,000 is an affordable price to pay for a house. He is living in cloud cuckoo land.

See this speech in context